


When It's Cold I'd Like to Die

by patxaran



Series: Leopikaweek2016 on tumblr [2]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Existential Crisis, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, bibliomaniac, bitter humor, melodramatic kurapika, runeberg torte, sweet sweet misery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 09:57:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8200874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patxaran/pseuds/patxaran
Summary: The only thing left on Kurapika's to-do-list is to complete his revenge on the Phantom Troupe. Unfortunately, they all manage to die in a freak accident before he can get to them. This sends Kurapika spiralling into an existential crisis. Leorio arrives to where Kurapika is holed up and tries to persuade him to find light in an existence that has lost all of its meaning.Honestly, this is a rather self-indulgent fic where I basically spend a bagilion words counting all the ways I can eloquently express Kurapika’s misery. There isn't much more to it than that except some Leopika stuff.





	1. The single lonely remnant of a vanished cause

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Needless to say, this fic completely ignores the Dark Continent Arc, because I just don’t like to write about arcs that aren’t finished. So I supposed this is an AU. 
> 
> 2\. Sinhelki is really obvious, because "Yorknew/shin" has taught me syllables are fluid and you only need shift them around to create placenames. I visited Helsinki for a weekend years ago, and when I decided I needed a setting with snow and ocean, my [extremely vague] recollection of the city volunteered itself for the story. That said, this is not a cut-and-paste version of Helsinki, the same as how in HunterxHunter the locations aren’t truly cut-and-paste versions of their inspirations/namesakes from the real world.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Phantom Troupe dies, and with them, hand in hand down into the icy depths, goes all of Kurapika's single-minded aim and purpose in life. Kurapika begins to suffer a crisis of self. He decides he will remain in Sinhelki forever.

There was surpassingly little to live for in the vacuum of a once revenge fueled existence whose entire meaning had been robbed from it practically overnight. The first action Kurapika had taken was to check that the story in paper was true, that the Phantom Troupe had all drowned in a tragic submarine accident off the bitterly cold coast of Sinhelki. Apparently exactly zero of their Nen abilities had been able to foretell or impede their untimely destruction. And with them, hand in hand down into the icy depths, went all of Kurapika's single-minded aim and purpose in life.

The second action Kurapika had taken was to buy himself a drink. He'd never been cool enough with idea of the losing his hair-trigger, carefully honed reflexes and other fine motor skills, albeit temporarily, for the short reprieve of drunkenness followed by the blissful, dreamless haze of an alcohol induced slumber. Given the circumstances, though, fuck it. What he was going to lose? He'd already lost the only impetus of action that he'd ever affixed himself to and which had consumed his every waking moment since he was twelve. What the hell else was there? Who the hell else could he be if not the vengeful lone survivor, the self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner of that monstrous organization that had destroyed his people?

Now, he was just the lone survivor, the single lonely remnant of a vanished cause and an entire culture, and it was the most wretched, isolating feeling to have ever contaminated his heart in a life already replete with pain.

Kurapika hadn't been able to finish the impulsively ordered drink. Apparently his self-destructive eyes were bigger than his stomach, and he was soon retching a sour, stinging liquid into the wet slurry of half-melted snow pockmarked with footprints. He'd been aiming for the ocean, but he'd stumbled over a chunk of ice in his haste to reach it, and that had been enough to unleash the sloshing contents of his stomach right there at his feet. This shamed Kurapika and brought back a tiny bit of perspective in the midst of his all-out, existentially bleak mood of "let's destroy this vessel I call my body that chains me to this world in much the way I'd hoped to find fulfillment chaining the kings of devils I'd perceived among us upon their eternal, red hot thrones in the caverns of hell."

…Or something to that effect. At any rate, vomiting where people needed to walk had been a wake-up call. He was going to have to create a new life, and alcohol wasn't going to provide much help.

The third action Kurapika had taken was to consult the doyens of literature. Surely in the cultural history of the human race there had at some point been a need to chronicle the eventual fall and redemption of a man enslaved to the will of that fiery revenge demon so often born of a human heart in agonizing pain. Kurapika, while having suffered a real tragedy the day his people had been killed, was sadly not a unique case in the world. He was part of an exclusive, heartbreaking club whose members fought and contorted in every direction necessary to escape having to ever quell their hate or assign any other meaning or purpose to life beyond a singular person or group's destruction. Thiers was a heart-rending story of loss and retaliation that traversed all barriers of time and culture.

That had to mean literature had got to it before Kurapika, right? Literature would tell him how to overcome the deathly emptiness that made the wind whistle as it blew straight through him. Books would save Kurapika, just as the curiosity they'd inspired in him had already saved him from the massacre of his people. Knowledge was power, and so long as he strived to know absolutely everything, nothing could ever defeat him.

There was one suffocating hiccup in this approach, which became obvious almost as soon as he'd set himself upon the first book. This was that, quite frankly, the literary prognosis for his situation was way more biased more towards what made a great tale, than to what made a beacon of hope, and those two paths of literary direction didn't really cross over all that much. The best, most relatable stories of revenge, were those with the terribly depressing endings and everyone dying in streams of repentant tears. Kurapika knew full well that reading these stories, what with their thinly veiled allegories for peace and forgiveness and their outright compulsion to paint the road of vengeance in all the colors of a blood-soaked and dismal rainbow, would only send him spiraling further downwards into despair. And yet, he still read them. With a morbid resignation to this being his destined, shared fate with the tragic heroes of old, he perused the dreariest tales of revenge gone astray when one's lifelong destructive impulse inevitably turned back on oneself.

In no time at all, the comforting, self-indulgent blanket of self-pity had wrapped itself snuggly around Kurapika's shoulders, where it warmed him in the consolation that if now there was truly nothing left to live for, than at least he had superseded the pitiable, mortal fear of death that plagued so many, lesser-developed characters occupying the world. Whereas before he'd accepted death as a necessarily high price to pay in pursuit of his mission of vengeance, now it was utterly worthless to him. It was less than worthless, to the point that being afraid of losing it was no longer a question. You couldn't even throw away something with so little value, but shed it almost involuntarily, like the thousands of dead skin cells lost to the wind in the movement of a hand.

Life, Kurapika concluded with morbid solemnity, was a feeble flame atop a candle, put out with a quick puff of air. It was gone in a faint trail of smoke, forecasting that once it had been and now it was no more, and then, even the smoke would cease. Life was hilarious like that. Prescribing meaning to it only gave the impression that once it was gone, it had been something worth too much to lose. But, it wasn't. It was only life. Outside one's own cranium there were billions more lives, all equally meaningless on the march forever onwards to death. He and his entire clan hadn't even registered as blips on the radar of the full, impossibly vast spectrum of human existence.

Finding it impossible to go anywhere or do anything else, Kurapika remained in Sinhelki for over a month. He felt that the ice and wind and rain here complimented him and his dark mood perfectly. When he looked out the window to the silent snowfalls barricading the doors in mountainous drifts, he sensed that the frozen world was the best world of all. What he failed to notice, or intentionally overlooked in his current partiality towards doom and gloom, was that there was nothing cold, stagnant or dead at all about the city. For one, the snow was never high enough to shut the place down, no matter how much Kurapika's dull gaze insisted on enlarging its quantity as he perceived it. The city wasn't even close to dying out behind its shuttered windows and latched doors. Inside the buildings and homes there was warmth and life and people persevering as always in a seasonal cycle they knew well and anticipated the comings and goings of. What Kurapika needed was an umbrella and a better attitude, and after being caught in two storms while still twenty minutes walking distance from home, Kurapika had at least managed the umbrella.

But as the tired maxim went, attitude really was everything. Not being from one of the snowier countries of the known world, Kurapika only saw the cold and wet surrounding him and very little else. He only felt how miserable it made him when he was already miserable, pacing the aisle of the market hall down from the harbor the day the glistening capsule tomb of the Phantom Troupe was dredged up and the bodies extracted so they could be sent to Meteor City for internment among their own kind. He'd stood at the front of a crowd of spectators that morning and witnessed as each corpse was loaded into the support vehicles, tallying them off with a precision refined over years of thinking of nothing but these people and what he would do to them once given the chance.

Only now that chance would never come. The wintery ocean had beat him to it, as well as whoever had been stupid enough to think a submarine qualified as an excellent get-away vehicle after stealing a cursed, mummified mermaid's tail from an ambassador's mansion. It'd been said the tail, while bringing power and prosperity to merchants, was a bad omen for ships, because it wished to return to the sea and would bring the vessel bearing it down to a watery grave. Apparently the thieves hadn't thought a submarine counted. Or maybe they hadn't believed in curses. Whatever the case, the troupe had all died from the error. Or maybe they'd died for something entirely unrelated. When the bodies were pulled out, the tail hadn't been with them, so who could say what had really occurred?

Kurapika only knew one thing in this madness: He was going to die in Sinhelki. Maybe today, or perhaps tomorrow, or fifty more years from now. The clear thing was that he in no way had the energy to leave. His life was already over, and Sinhelki would be his last intermediary pit-stop before laying down in the embrace of the grave. In preparation and grim acceptance of this changing current of his life, Kurapika quickly applied himself to learning the local languages. From this point on, he was where anyone could find him: tucked away next to the hearth of his dim garret, surrounded by his books on culture and language, always quiet and the epitome of a tired, spent soul hunkered down for the long wait.


	2. Runeberg torte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leorio shows up in Sinhelki. He finds Kurapika in a cafe eating a Runeberg torte. They decide to go someplace quieter to catch up.

At the start of the second month, one of the few friends Kurapika'd drawn close to since his revenge quest had started arrived to find him in the corner of a crowded café, picking morosely at a jam topped cake with a ring of sugar icing along its precipice. His friend didn't yet realize how rare of a sight this was. A lot of preparation had gone into it, actually. Kurapika had been required to summon the last of his faint desire to rise and leave his bedroom for this one thing that was biologically more important to him than his all encompassing anguish: food.

Despite knowing he could easily live off crackers and milk until he grew too weak of innutrition to meet the grey outside world at full height, Kurapika believed it was necessary to accustom himself to the local cuisine if he was going to be from Sinhelki now. Thus, in an emotionally dead haze of apathy and silence, he'd ventured out of his apartment with the singular goal of locating a source of sustenance within walking distance that he could syphon the necessary calories and nutrients off of until Death got around to him.

Things had stopped going to plan the moment Kurapika'd reached the café door. While he'd never been an avid fan of sweets, his calorie count had fallen so drastically low in isolation that he hadn't been able to resist the siren song of an almondy cake wafting its saccharine, soothing scent out into the street. Kurapika could smell each component of the delicacy as he carried his impulsively bought plate over to a far corner and readied to tuck in. He sensed every trace down to the exact liquor used in the soaking liquid and ripeness of the familiar raspberry fruit jam comprising the glistening, ruby pile crowning the cake's top. He could even smell the full quantity of the sugar used and name each individual spice. Indeed, it was almost sickening how clear such details were to him now, every aspect exposed with its arms open wide and promising to swiftly, professionally deliver the direct glucose injection his brain so ravenously craved.

The barely touched cake Kurapika's friend beheld him eating alone in the corner was the final in a series of three identical cakes Kurapika'd much too rapidly consumed beforehand. Like the alcohol he'd throw back in such blind enthusiasm weeks before, this momentary excess was also threatening to evacuate up his esophagus and back onto the plate. Kurapika was damn tired of feeling sick, but if it wasn't his stomach turning summersaults, then it was a headache, or a crick in his neck, or twinge in his back, or indigestion. His body seemed to want to follow the example of his brain. It saw his abject state and, not wanting to offend him, offered him an array of variously blinding migraines, because clearly this was what Kurapika truly wanted after two days devouring the contents of textbooks and little else.

"I've been looking for you for three days, Kurapika," said his friend in a tone meant to chide him for being so reclusive, but which came off as whining. "I was beginning to fear the worse."

"That fear was unfounded," said Kurapika. "But was it necessary to come all the way out here, Leorio?"

Leorio seemed convinced that it had been totally necessary. Kurapika was prone to falling off the face of the planet when he was in a mood, and Leorio considered this to be the absolute worse trait for a modern man to possess. The world was global now, interconnected, and you couldn't just avoid your phone for days at a time and hope no-one would think too much of it. Leorio, like any denizen of the age of answers, required information on-demand. There had to be signs of life and constant small reassurances. The virtue of patience and quietly hoping for the best were nothing but settling for less than what one had a right to demand. Leorio was a man of action. Leorio did things. He would not be made to wait.

"What's wrong? Why are you holed up here?" asked Leorio. "Didn't they send the Troupe's bodies back to Meteor City already? It was in online."

"They have. I was present. I investigated each one myself."

"So why are you sticking around?"

"Because…" Kurapika began, but soon realized he wasn't prepared to share the reason. He couldn't phrase it right, what with all the foreign words bouncing around his brain and crashing into each other, offering suggestions in tongues Kurapika wasn't even sure Leorio spoke. Wasn't even sure Leorio knew existed.

It'd been a long time since Kurapika had had a conversation that wasn't centered on some perfunctory monetary exchange in a shop. Most days, he spoke aloud only when he was losing the train of an overly long paragraph in a book and had to force himself to mumble along with it an effort to slow himself down. Occasionally, but not enough to bother anyone, he spoke softly to himself in public as he worked out the pronunciations of words he encountered in the street. None of this counted as real conversation, though. None of this was thinking of his opinions, forming them into words, and voicing them to another distinct person. They were just meaningless noise, like the snorting of a horse dozing in its stall or the mewling of a feral cat trying its luck at the window while you dined on a salad it wouldn't have been interested in eating anyway.

"I understand that this might not be the place," said Leorio, motioning to the packed café around them. He'd made the executive decision to move a stranger's coat from a chair so could he could sit down with Kurapika. So far no-one had confronted him over it, but he wasn't keen to hang around and find out they'd been offended when they returned. "How about we go somewhere quieter? I'll let you lead the way. You've clearly been here longer."

"Okay," said Kurapika, standing. Leorio hopped up as well, not having expected Kurapika to be so quick to agree. Kurapika still had a plate full of food in front of him.

"Your cake?"

Kurapika seemed to only just recall it was there. "Oh. Take it if you'd like."

"Don't mind if I do," said Leorio, who'd been eyeing the plate with a gluttonous intensity since he'd sat down. He picked the morsel up delicately, pinching the plump, moistened sides between the tips of two curved fingers. With an animalistic grunt heard more often in carnivores than sweetooths, he plopped the cake directly down his gullet. Abruptly, he choked. The cake was denser than he'd assumed. Several strong, loud thumps to his upper torso were needed to force the overambitious mouthful down.

"Fortunately the place is so crowded," Leorio gasped between heaving breaths, "or that might've been embarrassing for me. Remind me to never again bolt down strange cakes in foreign lands, Kurapika."

"If you were more polite in your eating habits, no-one would have to," said Kurapika. He took his coat from the back of his chair and turned to leave. 

Leorio skipped after Kurapika, struggling to pull on his own coat while also keeping up. Impeding this effort was the fact that his coat was of a size one might call ridiculous, if not stupid. Sinhelki wasn't even five hours from a place where such a coat would've been necessary, but Leorio was from the warm and sweaty south, and thus biased since birth to consider anything above the northern sea to be barren, windswept tundra in all directions.

"C'mon," said Kurapika once Leorio had finished stumbling his way outside to the street where Kurapika was waiting. "This way. Keep up."


	3. One end of the street was brighter and lead out to the harbor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leorio and Kurapika catch up a little. Kurapika agrees to play host for Leorio while Leorio is in town. Leorio has doubts over whether or not he is really up to the task he's set for himself.

One end of the street was brighter and lead out to the harbor. In that direction, the last rays of the early sunset were still visible between buildings as they reflected off windowpanes and piles of swept aside snow. Kurapika turned away from light, leading Leorio deeper into the city. The spaces were still wide and lit, but the freedom of the ocean wasn't in this direction. They were entering the confusing crosshatched grid of streets Leorio counted the intersections while navigating of instead of memorizing their impossible names.

"By the way, Kurapika. Where are you staying?"

"I have an apartment."

"Then I'll have to stay with you. The hostel I'm in is too pricey."

"Well, I guess since I live here I have to show you hospitality." Kurapika realized that this was indeed now what was expected from him now if anyone came to visit. He was still getting used to being settled somewhere and all the responsibilities that being settled entailed. The most important responsibility was to play host, and it was a new experience for him. In the past he'd primarily been the guest or a passerby, never the one rooted in one place permanently. Since the day his clan had been killed off, he'd gone from being someone from the middle of nowhere to someone from literally nowhere at all. And now he was from Sinhelki, and it was like he was whole other person.

"Wait? You live here now? In Sinhelki?" asked Leorio, astounded. He looked about appraisingly as they crossed the expansive cobblestone square outside the central train station. Snow had begun to fall, making the space around them seem muffled and more sedate. It was as if the world had become a library, and if Leorio spoke too loudly someone would fire a deafening shush at him and point menacingly at the sign he hadn't seen before specifying that one should please keep one's boorish voice down.

"Huh," he said quietly, barely able to see Kurapika around the furry hood of his unnecessarily artic coat. "I never thought you'd live somewhere so…north."

"North or south, it never really crossed my mind before. I never had much of a plan for what I'd do…after," said Kurapika with a shrug Leorio couldn't see. "I guess here's as good as anywhere."

"You like the cold? This place has plenty of cold."

"I guess I don't mind it," said Kurapika with another unseen shrug. He was doing that a lot now, dismissing everything with an apathetic roll of his shoulders and closed off responses. It was just so hard to care. Not even the cold could reach him, even as his hands stung and his body shook in convulsions because what he was wearing under his coat was too thin, and the icy wind had found him out.

"I need a warm drink," said Leorio, stopping to look down a near street for a restaurant or a café. "I'm frozen to the bone. Don't remind me we've only walked three blocks. I'm not of this clime, and I don't have anything that passes for an insulating layer. I'm really going broke on hot drinks here, I swear, but I just can't deal with this cold."

"We're almost to my apartment," said Kurapika, who kept walking onwards. Leorio carefully stepped over a pile of dirty, displaced snow at the edge of the trodden path and hurried to catch up. "I'll show you where it is, then you can go check out of your room in the hostel and come back."

"Okay, but you'd better have learned to drink while up here," said Leorio as he came back alongside, "or I'm going to have to swing by a shop on the way back. It's too cold not to drink."

"You're a medical professional. You should know better than anyone that alcohol doesn't actually make you warmer in the cold."

"I know it actually lowers the core temperature and blah blah blah, but who cares? We aren't about to die of hypothermia anytime soon, no matter how much it might feel like it out here."

"Well, there's no alcohol at my apartment, but I'll buy some while you're out if you really need it."

"I really do," Leorio assured him. "How much money should I give you?"

"More than you're going to want to…."

"And what exactly does that mean?"

"It's expensive."

Leorio grimaced as he pulled his wallet from his pocket to check how much cash was on him. "Damn," he muttered vehemently to himself over the amount he handed over. "Why the further north and miserable the world gets, the more expensive the drinking? It's kicking people when they're down, you know that? If anyone ever needed a drink…."

It wasn't much longer before they reached Kurapika's building. In near unison, they paused to knock the sludge and wet from their boots on a mat in the vestibule. Kurapika warned Leorio that he lived at the top of the building, but Leorio didn't mind it. The stairs were good exercise and got the blood flowing, which warmed him a little. Kurapika set a kettle on the stove as soon as they entered this small, single apartment. He volunteered to prepare something to drink, as it was the polite thing to do, and because he didn't want Leorio entering his kitchen and snooping around. All he had in the entire apartment was instant coffee and some tea, and it felt like one of those things he probably ought to conceal from Leorio. The groceries Kurapika'd been intending to buy had never been bought, but he'd make sure they were bought before Leorio returned from the hostel.

"There's more books than apartment in here," said Leorio, clearing a space off a chair in the front room. "I take it you don't have company over much."

"Correct," said Kurapika from the nearby, partially closed off kitchen as he pulled down two mugs and the canister of instant coffee.

"Well, lets talk more about that once we start drinking tonight."

Leorio sighed as he took a seat and pulled his unfastened coat around him. The heat had been set to low while Kurapika had been out, which meant Leorio was properly freezing. If there was one thing Leorio couldn't handle, it was the cold, even if the extreme nature of it was mostly in his head. In this way, he and Kurapika perhaps had something in common.

"Here," said Kurapika, placing the mugs of hot water on the small table between them. He held up the tea bags and canister of coffee. "I'm out of sugar, so keep that in mind when you choose. This instant coffee brand is a bit poor. It's got a harsh flavor without sugar and isn't very good."

"Drink the coffee they serve in my country and then tell me that," said Leorio, making the bold decision to go for the coffee with a hint of personal pride in his ability so suffer. "A Gourmet Hunter I met in Yorkshin told me we have the worst coffee in the world. He said we literally burn the beans in sugar or something before grinding them, so it isn't even a question of whether or not we brew it properly. Apparently, our problem starts way before then. We're masochistic, I guess. That flavor will definitely wake you up at 6am, though. And it isn't really so bad with ice in summer. Or with plenty of milk and sugar. In fact, don't ever drink it hot without milk. The great thing about it is that it's cheap, though. Buying coffee in York Shin physically hurts. It's practically water! And more than twice the price! It's highway robbery out there."

Kurapika solemnly blew onto his own drink as Leorio continued to speak about his coffee experience as though Kurapika had any intention of ever leaving Sinhelki and travelling to Leorio's home country. Kurapika was going to reside and die here, and he'd need a lot more than the promise of absolutely reprehensible coffee to compel him to do otherwise. Leorio wasn't exaggerating his ability to take his coffee black and awful, though. He was sipping along merrily and deemed the coffee to be "not all that bad", thus signifying to Kurapika that whatever part of Leorio may have once valued a high standard of potability in his coffee had died long ago and left behind a monster who only appreciated the dizzying heights of the caffeine content.

The two men left together after finishing their hot beverages. That parted ways at the main street. Leorio headed back into the heart of the city towards his hostel to check out, and Kurapika went in the direction of the nearest grocery store indicated by the map on his phone. Before walking ten steps, though, Kurapika heard a loud curse behind him, carried over on the wind, and turned to see Leorio struggling with the hood of his coat that had been blown back. He hadn't fastened the hood high enough to keep it in place, and his arms were too excessively padded and marshmallow-like to make lifting it back up an easy feat.

With a sigh and a soft shake of his head, Kurapika came up behind Leorio and lifted the hood for him. Leorio spun around to see who the hell was touching him. He relaxed once he confirmed that it was only Kurapika. Without comment, as none was truly necessary when Leorio knew perfectly well what a fool he was acting, Kurapika fastened the buttons and ties as high as they could go. Leorio stood still and waited like a well-trained child whose parent was required to bundle him up before sending him off to school.

Leorio tried to thank Kurapika after, but his voice was muffle by how incredibly high Kurapika had closed his hood and pulled up his scarf. Instead of telling Leorio that he was welcomed for it, Kurapika advised him to buy a hat, and then turned back down the street towards the grocery store.

For a lingering moment, Leorio watched Kurapika head off, a solitary, grey-clad figure moving with a leaden step through the whispering snow. The slight form grew slowly indiscernible from the darkening facades of the buildings surrounding him as he progressed, as if Kurapika could easily pass right through their walls if he didn't turn to follow the pavement. Leorio shook his head and refocused his eyes, aware it wasn't really that he couldn't make Kurapika out from the other end of the street, but that there wasn't much left of his friend now to rightfully say that Kurapika fully existed on their current plane. Perhaps the physical vessel was all that was left, the biological package persisting while the soul contained inside cringed, shrunk back, sputtered once, and vanished. Perhaps Leorio had arrived too late to affect any improvement on the state of affairs. Perhaps he'd started out far too late. Ten, twelve, fifteen years too late, in fact; ever since the fateful day Kurapika had wished farewell to his friends and family for the first, and final, time.


	4. The two men reconvened a little over an hour later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leorio and Kurapika talk about Kurapika books, and then they commence the evening of drinking. Leorio drinks for courage. Kurapika barely touches his glass.

The two men reconvened a little over an hour later, Leorio lugging his too large suitcase (it had needed to be sufficiently large to contain his massive puff of a coat), and Kurapika with the alcohol--five half-liter bottles of it nestled in the crook of his arm like a delicate, glass infant swaddled in brown packing paper. The groceries were already upstairs and put away, just in time to give Leorio the impression that they'd supposedly always been there.

"I'll make something to eat," said Leorio. "Nothing fancy, but edible. How hungry are you?"

"Anything will do," said Kurapika, not really answering the actual question with the quantifying statement it entailed. He was honestly famished, but starving dully in the self-imposed solitude of his improvised attic hermitage was Kurapika's own business. Leorio wouldn't have understood, Kurapika assured himself, though what Kurapika was really more afraid of was that Leorio would understand far too well and call Kurapika out for the overzealous glutton for misery Kurapika was. Kurapika knew his perspective on the futility and total, abject despair of human existence was true, but he wasn't ready to dispute or defend it from someone as tenacious as Leorio just yet.

Leorio, none the wiser, disappeared into the kitchen. Kurapika took this as an opportunity to tidy the main room a little. He didn't get very far. Leorio had been partly right about there being more books than apartment, and Kurapika was soon discovering that there weren't many places to move them all to except into even taller piles. The sweet smell of cooking onion gradually filled the apartment, causing Kurapika's stomach to tighten and bunch up in knotted anticipation. Kurapika tried to talk his stomach down, warning it that Leorio often professed to being unable to cook anything but the most basic of dishes that had been learned out of economic necessity rather than any true love of the gastronomic arts. But, Kurapika's stomach didn't care. Something as small and simple as sautéed onions caused the stomach to turn on Kurapika with a mutinous fervor, and it proceeded to put him in sudden and considerable amounts of pain as recompense for the past weeks fraught with suffering at Kurapika's hand. By the time the food was finished, Kurapika found it was all he was capable of thinking about.

They ate in silence. Kurapika was not at liberty to talk, as his stomach directed him to focus primarily on the task of eating before anything else. The food itself he hardly remembered. Drinking was scheduled to follow soon after, though Kurapika was hesitant to take part. He told Leorio about his previous experience of vomiting into the snow, and Leorio laughed at him.

"What the hell did you drink?" asked Leorio, grinning in mischievous anticipation.

"I think it was brandy."

"That reminds me of a girl I knew who once got shit-faced on brandy. She drank like half the bottle and threw up, and we were asking her what the hell she was thinking. She told us she didn't think the brandy would be strong because, and I quote exactly, 'old men drink brandy'. She just kept repeating that over and over to us when she wasn't vomiting. Of course, we laughed about it and told her that old men are the liver cirrhosis plagued experts of drinking. She thought because old men were weak and ill all the time, that they drank easier drinks. We couldn't believe it."

"I only had a small glass," Kurapika confessed with some shame. "It was the only thing I could see clearly on the shelf. I wasn't in a mood to pick anything specifically. I hadn't eaten that day, so being ill was to be expected."

"And how long after getting sick in the street did you get this place?"

"A week."

"Well, damn," said Leorio, looking around. "And all these books?"

"I've been here a little more than a month."

"And you have _all these books_?" asked Leorio, dumbfounded. He stood suddenly to full height from his chair and made a small turn about, noting every precarious pile and packed shelf and littered surface. His expression reflected his utter astonishment. Even the bed, which was sized for a body and a half, seemed to have the width for the body put aside for books and the width for the half reserved for Kurapika, assuming Kurapika even slept there and not directly on the floor or in his chair mid-paragraph. Leorio let out a low, appreciative whistle, and sat back down.

"Did you even buy all these?" Leorio waved with a limp arm to the endless books that seemed to lean forward gradually and close in on them as the shadows grew deeper. The the early night had fallen now outside. Leorio turned up the lamp between them to a higher setting as he spoke. "How did you afford it? Have you been some kind of latent bibliomaniac this whole time, just waiting for a permanent address to unleash your crazy? _Have you even read these?_ "

"I began ordering them once I moved in," said Kurapika. "The money I pay for it with is what I have in savings. I made a lot of money in my previous job. As for reading them, I confess I haven't read them all yet, though many are books I read years ago and thought would be useful to have on hand. It's mostly reference material."

"Reference for what? What are you researching?"

"Right now I'm learning the local languages. Other than that, though, it's just something to do in my free time."

"You have a lot of free time," said Leorio dryly. Kurapika nodded.

"I do."

Leorio went to collect glasses from the kitchen and brought them out with the bottles of alcohol, still wrapped in the packing paper as Kurapika had left them. Leorio asked him what the drinks in the bottles were as he stood in the doorway, but Kurapika wasn't sure. Most had mint in them, he said, which luckily Leorio didn't hate. Leorio poured them both glasses from a bottle he selected at random, and returned the other bottles to the kitchen counter. He brought the drinks over and toasted Kurapika before drinking his glass down at once and refilling it. Kurapika didn't finish his own glass so quickly, only tasted the contents and rested it in his hand.

The drinking that followed was quiet, serious, and dedicated. Normally, Leorio was an amiable drinker, full of stories and jokes and good times, but the muted atmosphere of this small, cold apartment subdued him. He was halfway through the bottle all on his own, so Kurapika went to the kitchen to take another from the counter. This he placed in front of himself, his own designated bottle for the evening, telling Leorio he could keep the one he already had for himself. Without a word, Leorio finished his current drink and took up the bottle. He leaned back into his chair and rested the bottle on his chest, no longer intending to bother with a glass that would only serve to slow him down.

Leorio already knew it was going to take a fair amount of drinking before he could openly admit to Kurapika why he'd come all the way the Sinhelki to find him. Hopefully, the bottle Leorio had now was strong enough to get Leorio sufficiently drunk for the task. Otherwise, Leorio might just have to be brave on his own. This was not impossible for Leorio; he was naturally quite bold. It would be immensely more difficult, though. It would be easier with the forced courage of a strong drink compelling him forward

Deep down, however, Leorio had the suspicion that no matter how much he might drink, nothing was ever going to be easy with Kurapika. Right now, though, he'd tell himself he wasn't drunk enough yet, and put it off a little while longer.


	5. The matter of what Kurapika is to do from now on is decided

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leorio tries to persuade Kurapika to move to Leorio's country. They revisit the past, when Kurapika asked Leorio for a relationship and Leorio turned him down. The matter of what Kurapika is to do from now on is decided.

"Do you really live here?" asked Leorio pensively in one of their sporadic moments of conversation. He and Kurapika were sat on the floor now facing each other as they inclined against the slopes of partly collapsed piles of books. Between them, where their feet and legs rested, was the clearest space of floor in the entire apartment, the space right in front of the radiator. They'd moved to this spot to be in the most direct heat available, because the black night had grown so cold that it was painful against their backs and around their shoulders where the heat passed by and didn't touch them. Leorio had lain out his coat behind him for padding from the uneven, hard edges of the books. This also helped to catch the warmth from the radiator before it escaped past him into the vast room. Kurapika, meanwhile, had wrapped himself up in the heavy blanket that he wore like a long shawl most days as he read.

"Yes, I live here," said Kurapika, sipping at his cup with an empty expression. He stared at the metal grating and listened to soft, clunking sounds that accompanied the production of heat.

"Why?" asked Leorio, emboldened by drink. "Is there…some other reason? Like, a personal reason?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, you found…something here? Maybe someone who, I dunno, maybe held your hand and told you everything would be okay after the loss of the Phantom Troupe?"

Kurapika smiled softly as this insecurity of Leorio's was revealed to him. "No. I don't know anyone here."

"Then why learn the language?"

"Because I live here."

"But couldn't you live anywhere else?"

Kurapika shrugged and lowered his glass. "I haven't got anywhere better to go. Here or anywhere, it doesn't matter."

"If it doesn't matter," said Leorio, deciding why the hell not try for it, "then why not move to like, my country? Our language is much easier, for one. It's not a rich country, but that just means that you could probably buy yourself a huge house and just…fill it with books or whatever, I guess. Life is way simpler there. Plus, you'll know someone."

"I don't have the energy to leave Sinhelki," said Kurapika and let out a sigh so heavy it seemed to add physical weight to the air around them. He filled his cup with more of the unknown, spirituous contents of the bottle next to him and wrapped his blanket tighter about his shoulders.

"That's not a problem. I will literally carry you out of this city if I have to."

"Really?" asked Kurapika, more than a touch incredulous, but smiling kindly as he humored Leorio.

"Maybe not so much carry as drag in parts, but I'll figure it out."

"Why? Why would I travel days to your country just to do there what I'm doing here? I don't see the point. I'm fine where I am. This is where I stop. I've decided."

"You're a Hunter. We can break leases with impunity, can't we? I think there was a clause like that in my own apartment contract. I don't know. I barely read it. It was two years ago."

"It's not about my lease; it's about my resolve."

"But just…move to my country. I won't have to travel up here every time I want to see you."

"How much are you planning to see me?"

"As much as possible. You need someone to check in on you. You can't just banish yourself up here and expect that people will leave you alone. The first thing I'm going to do after leaving here is to tell Gon and Killua where you're holed up. Then, you'll have to contend with them, and not just me."

Kurapika was quiet a moment. There was little he could think to say. Leorio was attempting to persuade him to move, to leave Sinhelki, all on the promise that he'd be happier if he did so. But Leorio was assuming, mistakenly, that happy was something Kurapika even aspired to be anymore. Kurapika wouldn't be happy in Leorio's bright and sunny country. Kurapika wasn't going to be happy anywhere, and that wasn't anyone's fault but ten drowned corpses extracted from a frozen submarine a month ago.

Kurapika caught Leorio's eyes firmly in his own, holding them there with a sudden determination that surprised Leorio. For a fleeting second, Leorio attempted to look away, but found his gaze pulled back virtually against his will. He suspected he might not be nearly drunk enough to face what Kurapika might say or do next. However, to drink more would require a momentary glance in some other direction, and that was impossible.

"Do you know there's an entire language in my head I can't speak to anyone? That I carry a precocious twelve-year-old's limited knowledge of a culture that no longer exists? I don't have a home. My people didn't have one, so I can't even go back to where we lived because that place was chosen over a generation ago for its remoteness, not for some kind of cultural tie to it. Here is as good as anywhere for me. Anywhere I go, I will always be alone."

"Don't be stupid," said Leorio automatically. "You're not alone. Don't pretend those kinds of things." Leorio knew these arguments. He knew, in theory, how to respond to them. He tried his best.

"I was so focused on leaving, so eager to explore the world, that I dedicated my time to learning all about everyone else. I took my own culture, my own people, somewhat for granted. The Kurta weren't going anywhere. The Kurta would always be there."

Gradually, a strange, sardonic mirth that Leorio had never imagined began to dawn on Kurapika's face. Apparently the bitter hilarity of this particular irony of his life had played back and forth through Kurapika's mind ceaselessly for years, though he was breaching the topic now with Leorio for the first time. Leorio had never seen Kurapika suddenly so ugly, as though the depthless sadness inside had risen with boiling urgency to the surface to prove to Leorio incontrovertibly that it was really there. To make him incredibly uncomfortable in the ardor of the self-hatred and disgust it bore to light. Such emotions had always been there, Kurapika now showed him, hidden in wait behind the mask that Kurapika wore over them. Kurapika had been too well aware of how bad it would look to ever let the part of his anger he directed at himself show.

"But it was the other way around," said Kurapika with that same hideous expression that wouldn't be stricken so easily now that it dominated his features. "The world outside will always be there. It's the only world there is and has always been. My people are already gone. It's being locked outside in a storm of so many new and unknowable things. Except the house was hit by lightening while you were outside, it blew up, and now, even if you go stand exactly where it was, lay down in its wet ashes and debris, it's gone forever."

There was a pause as Leorio puzzled out the metaphor. He cleared he throat lightly before he spoke.

"Look, I...get...that," said Leorio. He lent forward as he spoke in some half conceived notion that this would better express his earnestness. "And I'm not going to step around your grief with some pithy, placatory remark implying that because I played along and gave you a bone of sympathy, you're now obliged to pretend you feel a little better and still aren't completely fucking miserable. If you ask me, really, I kinda prefer to see you're upset, because it feels like you trust me enough to be completely honest. ...Although...it's also possible you're trying to scare me off by showing me I can't fix what's wrong, and I ought to just give up and leave."

"You know you can't fix it."

"I do know. But also, I don't intend to fix something that isn't really broken."

Confusion peppered the hideous amusement. Kurapika looked down at the bottle between his feet, trying to remember if alcohol was supposed to have a hallucinatory effect. He couldn't remember having ever read anything about that. Still it was clear Leorio was drunk and saying nonsense. Kurapika had read all about rambling drunks at least. Those characters were often the ones who dropped the ominous hints in mystery books. Their ranting seemed disjointed and mad at first, but they tended to say a lot of truth. Kurapika hoped that in this instance art hadn't imitated life too closely.

"Leorio…" Kurapika began, but hadn't really thought of where he'd intended to finish. Kurapika couldn't imagine what about his destroyed life wasn't actually broken. How the hell had Leorio imagined there was still any infinitesimal part of Kurapika that had come out unscathed?

"Don't worry. What I mean is that you have every reason to be miserable," Leorio reassured him. "Being miserable is not broken. Broken is more like someone who _isn't_ miserable in your situation, or for whom the misery is incapacitating. Am I saying you can only be miserable, that you're doomed to never be happy? No. What I'm saying is you are under no obligation to 'get over' the fact that your entire family, everyone you knew, your entire people, died. Shit. I don't expect you to ever be over that. Don't even try to ever pretend that you are in some ill-conceived attempt to convince me you're okay and that I should leave you alone."

"It's impossible for you to leave me alone. You'll be bothering me all the time if I move to your country."

"No, I won't. I'll keep an eye on you, but I won't bother you. I won't stop by unannounced like this, for one. Though to be fair, I did try to call before coming here."

"How did you know I'd be here?"

"I figured you'd kinda be like this. Holed up someplace. Not too far."

"But you seemed surprised when I told you I lived here."

"I didn't mean to come off as surprised. I was just surprised how stubborn you were so quickly. I was annoyed it wouldn't be easy. I figured I had to hear your reasons."

"And you still want me to leave?"

"I want peace of mind. This is probably the last time I'll be able to find you, you see. If you go anywhere else, I won't have any idea where to look. I want to convince you to stay near me, because now you have nowhere specific to go, and I'm selfish and want you to choose to stay near your friend."

Even the wind seemed to cease at that moment, listening with impatience for more. There was nothing else. The whole world groaned and crossed its arms over its chest reproachfully, because the meaning behind what Leorio was really saying didn't match the exact definitions of the words he'd used.

"You're in love with me," said Kurapika for Leorio, although with the slightest inflection as if he were perhaps asking a question. "That's why you ask me if I was involved with anyone here."

The hurdle had been traversed. Leorio found courage in this and resolved himself to no longer mince his words.

"I love you," admitted Leorio. The words came easier after Kurapika had already said them. Leorio only needed to pluck the syllables out of the air where they hung between him and Kurapika and try them on a bit himself to see if they suited him. Already Leorio saw that the matter was rather more complicated than whether or not Leorio was in love. If he were in love, Leorio would've said so a long time ago, because Leorio found empty, endless pining to be a waste of time. He had very little patience for all-consuming, lingering emotions that hurt him and interfered with the critical, mental dexterity required for his work.

"Don't assume too much, Kurapika. I've never let myself be in love with you. Seems reckless to fall in love with someone who isn't ever around. I'm not stupid."

"I'm sorry. That's right. I know you care deeply, and that that's how you are with people. People like you become doctors because you want to help people. I misunderstood."

"Well, don't feel too bad. It hasn't been all that easy, really. Especially not after you…."

"I know. I'm sorry about that, too. I was being selfish. I was confused. You were too nice to me. You are too kind in general, and I was too alone."

"Do you remember what I said then?"

"You asked me to stay with you. Like you said again now. You said it was unhealthy to harbor romantic feelings for someone who isn't ever there."

Leorio chuckled at his words he was sure Kurapika must've been reciting from memory. "Hell, well, I'm a doctor. So, I know all about good health. Anyway. You might think you have nothing left and nowhere to go, so, I've come here to remind you that what I said still stands. This is a legitimate offer. I'm not simply trying to be nice. What you wanted before, I can give it to you, but you have to stay with me. Or at least in touch with me."

"I'll be in Sinhelki."

"I want you closer."

"You'll always know where to find me."

"Stop being so stubborn. If it truly doesn't mater where you go, then leave with me. Otherwise, admit to yourself that not only is your life short on any clear direction now, but also you're too lazy or too much of a coward to give it another one. All you want is revenge, and you're going to sit here and throw a fit for the rest of your idiotic life because you can't have revenge on your own ridiculous terms. You don't seem to realize that you're being offered a new lease on life. Really, you should take this chance to try something new. I mean, I'm not all that new, but like, this is a new direction for us."

"But how are you so sure that I'm in love with you? You also assume a lot. You turned me down before when I told you."

"I don't even care about that. I just want you nearby. I already accepted that I'd lose you when I turned you down the first time. I'm not persuading you to fall in love with me again here. I just want you around. I want to be able to meet up with you without having to catch a five-hour flight. That's what I'm really saying. Don't even worry about that other stuff."

Kurapika sighed and took up the glass before him. He took too large a gulp; it seemed to go down far too easy now. After some reflection, he turned back to Leorio.

"But what will I even do in your country?" 

Leorio shrugged.

"What are you even doing now?"

"...How will I move all these books?"

Leorio opened his mouth to respond, but all that came out was laughter. He grabbed a nearby book and weighed it in his hand, as though trying to estimate how heavy the rest of the contents of the room might be if he had to carry it.

"Hey. Don't let the books be your anchor, Kurapika. You collected them here, you can move them out, too."

Kurapika began to laugh as well. Leorio continued the joke, taking advantage of the small reprieve it offered from facing so many difficult words and emotions. Feigning meticulous attention, he went through various books within reach, accounting which he deemed worth keeping and which could be set on fire for warmth if the radiator ever died. He said that Kurapika already ought to have had a system for that, just in case.

After a quick shuffle through a pile of slimmer tomes, Leorio found a book of fairytales in his native language. He asked if Kurapika had read it. Kurapika had, but a long time ago, and in translation. Leorio opened the book and began asking Kurapika questions to test his memory. Kurapika was surprised with the amount he'd retained, because not even Kurapika himself was immune to finding his rote memorization skills unusual at times. It was much stranger, however, to hear Leorio speaking pieces of his native language when he said the names of tales or characters that didn't have internationally standardized pronunciations or translations. When Leorio was done quizzing Kurapika, he snapped the book shut and deemed that Kurapika clearly had a detailed and comprehensive knowledge of the entire culture he was about to enter. He would therefore face little difficulty adjusting.

Kurapika no longer argued the point of whether or not he'd leave Sinhelki. The matter seemed suddenly decided. The ties holding him down to his sorrowful garret loosed enough to wriggle out of, or in fact hadn't been all that strong to begin with. Like all frozen things, they'd melted in the warmth of Leorio's cheery disposition and the heat of the radiator that was gradually becoming much too intense. The sea of self-pity Kurapika'd wallowed in alone in this same room for days seemed to recede, and he didn't rush off after it. He pulled his blanket tighter and stayed in place as he listened to Leorio twittering to himself like a caged parakeet as he attempted to read aloud a passage from a book written in a language he only half understood and never spoke.

The warmth, the good feeling: This had always been the problem with friends. The indulgent, black thoughts and emotions that nursed Kurapika's hate and drove him onwards in his quest for revenge were difficult to sustain in the company of those he cared about and who cared about him in return. It had frustrated before and made him anxious, afraid he would falter in his mission because he was too weak to keep up the energy needed to stay angry when his foe was not directly before him. Kurapika had never anticipated how exhausting and difficult it would prove to actively hate at a distance. Negativity demanded solitude in which to fester, and he'd provided it with plenty of that, because allowing the anger to lessen for even an instant had felt too much like a betrayal of the memory his entire clan. He'd needed the anger to drive him, to fuel his quest for revenge.

What was Kurapika letting fester now, though? What purpose was it serving him? Was there another way different from this habit of mulling in solitude that he'd practiced for so many long years already? And was it even really a habit anyway...or was it just the person he was?

Leorio's teashades, perched precariously as always near the end of his nose, slipped off with the sweat from the growing heat and clattered to the floor. Kurapika reached for them first, carefully pinching the bridge between the lenses so as not to smudge the glass while he picked them up. Leorio smiled apologetically. He wiped the skin of his nose with the back of his sleeve before he taking the shades and putting them back on. He looked at Kurapika over the tops of the frames with his head cocked to the side as though asking if Kurapika found him more attractive now that he'd resumed his proper accessorization. He flashed a complicit smile as well, suggesting with mock smugness that he was confident Kurapika did.

The smile froze and then faded on a slow inhale of breath. Kurapika hadn't moved, hadn't looked away, from the moment he'd lent forward to hand over the fallen shades. Leorio had only just now realized it and ceased his joking tone accordingly. There was a certain seriousness in Kurapika's face. Tension, cut throughout his still, crouched figure, reigned. Leorio likewise grew serious, though he wasn't entirely what sure for. A moment had started between them; Kurapika had instigated something. 

Leorio suspected what might happen next, because he'd seen the exact same uncertainty mingled with firm resolve the last time, years ago. It'd been there when Kurapika had kissed him during a overnight train ride after finishing a two week assignment in a city near to where Leorio had been living.

Leorio still knew the full count of how many times he'd run into Kurapika in his entire life. It was cyclical thing, the encounters distributed over years, following closely along with the emotional upheaves that marked the course of Kurapika's life. Leorio hadn't liked that Kurapika only sought him out when he was nostalgic or weary, though this hadn't stopped Leorio from dropping nearly everything to make room for Kurapika when Kurapika showed up. Thus, Leorio knew Kurapika had visited him exactly five times in those two weeks before the fated train ride. Each time they'd met, Kurapika had revealed with increasing openness a peculiar sort of nostalgia for the times he'd spent with Leorio and their friends in the past. On the surface, this had appeared normal. Kurapika had always clung to the past when speaking with Leorio, rarely revealing much about his present, either because he didn't want to or because he couldn't. Leorio had noted something new and peculiar those days, however, because behind their banal, shared recollections, there was the undercurrent of something more Kurapika was intending to say. This had cumulated in Kurapika asking permission to kiss Leorio on the train. Leorio had granted that permission. By the time they'd parted ways the next day, Leorio had been forced to turn Kurapika down. Leorio would drop everything to see Kurapika always, but he wouldn't give up everything to be with someone who might leave one day and never reappear.

Kurapika didn't bother to ask for the kiss this time. Leorio'd already consented by opening his arms and pulling Kurapika closer. Their lips met and lingered a moment against each other until Leorio pressed forward and deepened the kiss. For a moment, there was nothing else. The room around them was filled with minute sounds—the rattling of the radiator, the books sliding over each other as they slipped and thudded softly, intakes and exhalations of air, the rustle of clothing and Leorio's intrusively loud coat—but the room may as well have been filled with a deafening silence. Cold and heat and sound--the room itself--all of that no longer existed. Both Leorio and Kurapika could only perceive the sensation of touch as they held each other close and gave over to a rush of emotion and longing.

"So, leave with me," said Leorio quietly into Kurapika's hair once the kiss (really a chain of kisses), had broke and Kurapika has slumped down to rest against Leorio's chest. "You don't need to live with me. You don't even need to see m every day. Just stay within reach."

"Fine," said Kurapika with a sigh that released the last of his reluctance. "Sure."

What typically would've followed such an intense moment would've been a longer, quieter moment of listening to each other's heartbeats and thinking deeply over the new leaf that had just been turned. They'd rest, reflect, and perhaps kiss again, but the decision had been made and a course of action would follow later. For now, it would be just enough to lean back against the pile of books, wrapped in each other's arms, in a sort of emotional panning away and fade out, the end scene. Roll credits.

But, as it was, the tranquility only lasted a few minutes. Leorio jumped with a jolt of surprise then, ruining everything to sit up and sniff the air. He leaned down towards Kurapika, still sniffing, and Kurapika inclined away from him, disturbed. Leorio pulled Kurapika back and smelled his face. He kissed Kurapika for fractions of a second, but it wasn't a true kiss. He was bringing their mouths together so he could shoot his tongue out and taste the edge of Kurapika's lips. Kurapika leapt back in alarm, making a face that implied he thought Leorio had lost his mind and was gross.

"Uh, what the hell, Leorio? Ew." He wiped his mouth on the edge of the blanket still hanging to one shoulder, eyeing Leorio warily the entire time.

"You aren't drinking," said Leorio. "Is that water in your glass?"

Kurapika blushed with embarrassment and looked away, guilty as charged. Leorio took up the glass and tested its contents. Kurapika didn't try to stop him.

"You know, I was kind of worried about how much you were drinking. I was scared I was going to have to take care of your drunk ass, but...you swapped the alcohol out with water. What the hell?"

"I didn't want to get sick."

"But…what did you do with the alcohol that was in the bottle?"

"It's in a tupper in the fridge."

" _In a tupper. In the fridge._ Well, shit, at least you didn't pour it all down the sink."

"What didn't fit in the tupper I poured out."

"Well, shit."

This moment, indeed this overall situation, multiplied by forever many years, was how things proceeded between Kurapika and Leorio. Three days later, they were packing books. Optimistically, Leorio suggested they ignite all the books he'd designated for the burn pile, but Kurapika would not part with a single one. This was how Kurapika and all of his precious tomes moved to Leorio's country all together, with Kurapika never to be part from his loved ones ever again.

The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahahaha so the fic just kinda ends like that. I got tired of sustaining the voice. Maybe one day I will come back and edit it to something more fitting, but for now, it is how it is. I like to end things on a light note anyway. This just might be a little too light, though....


End file.
